


Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Lifetimes

by Kats_watermelon



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, immortal au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12206475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kats_watermelon/pseuds/Kats_watermelon
Summary: John Murphy had lived a lot of lives. He liked to think he was a bit of an expert at living, at that point. He’d survived a plague that wiped out half of Europe, a journey across the ocean that killed hundreds more, a revolution, a civil war, two world wars, and the sixties. The only constant in all of the life he’d lived was change. Andher, of course.Title fromLifetimesby Oh Wonder





	Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Lifetimes

**Author's Note:**

> the immortal au nobody asked for
> 
> quick disclaimer - the majority of this takes place during US history and my only reference is my teenage roommate and my fiance, who has a degree in marine biology. I might get some things wrong, please bear with me (I was never a history person)

John Murphy had lived a lot of lives. He liked to think he was a bit of an expert at living, at that point. Looking back, he couldn’t decide on the exact date of the end of his mortal life, but he figured that it was sometime in July of 1353 or August of 1353. Either way, he’d been alive for a very long time. As a result, he’d seen quite a few things that many other people hadn’t. He’d survived a plague that wiped out half of Europe, a journey across the ocean that killed hundreds more, a revolution, a civil war, two world wars, and the sixties. The only constant in all of the life he’d lived was change.

And _her_ , of course.

 

* * *

 

While many of his years were a blur, the first of his life were always painfully clear. He was born a poor farmer in England, with hardworking parents who still got shit on by the life they lived. By the time he was twelve, both were dead from the plague. He wasn’t sure how he survived, but he fled his home as soon as he could, stealing to eat and continuing his endless travel to avoid the consequences of his constant thievery. Despite the years that had passed, he could always remember his mother and father’s faces. The way his mother would sing to herself as she brushed her hair and his father’s kind smile as he lifted his son up to reach something on a high shelf.

Even seven hundred years later, Murphy remembered everything from those twenty years of being human. And he remembered the beginning of his immortality. He remembered the cold biting into his skin as he made his way to the witch’s cottage, clutching the spot on his arm. He remembered stepping into sudden enveloping warmth, all the cold leaving his body in a rush. He remembered the witch’s condescending cackle when he asked her name.

“Silly boy,” she said. “Didn’t your parents teach you anything?”

“My parents are dead.”

“Ah.” The witch tilted her head, studying him. “That is a tragedy.”

Murphy shifted a little uncomfortably, his hand tightening around the bruise-like mark on his arm.

“I’m here because - ”

“I know why you’re here, John Murphy,” the witch said. She raised one eyebrow at his shocked expression. “Do you really think anyone approaches my home without my knowledge and approval?”

“No, I suppose not.”

“You’re here because you have the plague and you want me to cure it.”

“Can you?”

The witch stood, her skirt swishing as she began to search through vials of liquids and bundles of dried herbs.

“Of course I can cure it,” she said. “But there is a cost.”

“I’ll pay anything. I have nothing to lose.”

“This is not money that I’m asking for,” the witch said, crushing herbs in a bowl. Murphy frowned.

“What is it that you want?” he asked.

“Your mortality.”

Murphy blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“That is the price for curing you of this plague. Do you know how many have died from it?”

“I-”

“No, obviously you don’t. Too many for you to comprehend, I promise you that. Such a heavy plague has a heavy price. So, your mortality.”

“Done.”

The witch raised her eyebrows again, stirring together the crushed herbs and another substance that looked like milk.

“Are you sure? Mortality is a precious thing.”

If Murphy was being completely honest (which he wasn’t always), he didn’t actually know what “mortality” was. But if it would cure him of the plague that stole his parents from him, it was worth it.

The witch pulled his hand off the spot on his arm and clucked, smearing some of the green paste she’d been mixing onto the skin. Murphy shuddered at the cool, slimy sensation. The witch continued to smear it on his body, muttering something under her breath. Murphy couldn’t make out the words, so he just waited for her to finish. Finally, she pressed her hand to his chest. Murphy sucked in a sharp breath as the green paste evaporated from his skin, leaving it unmarred and pale.

“From this day on, you shall not grow old,” the witch said. “You shall not fall ill, and those who try to wound you will find you bloodless and unharmed. You will not die. You will be immortal.”

It was at that moment that Murphy realized what he had traded, and only one thought went through his head.

_Ah, fuck._

The witch removed her hand from his chest and turned it over, revealing a small stone sitting in her palm.

“Mortality,” she said. “A very valuable thing. Very few are willing to trade it away for anything.”

Murphy eyed her suspiciously.

“I suggest you leave England,” the witch said, turning away from him. She dropped the stone into a small bowl. “You have made many enemies here, and there is nothing left for you. Go to France. More will await you there.”

Murphy swallowed and hurried away from the witch’s cottage, breaking into a sprint as soon as he could. He wasn’t about to take the advice of a witch that had just cured him of the plague and probably made him immortal. He needed to get off that damn island, but he wasn’t going to France. Whatever the witch had done to him was terrifying. He was done with magic, done with witches. He was going literally anywhere else. He promised that to himself.

Unfortunately, John Murphy wasn’t very good at keeping promises, even to himself. He ended up staying in England for another three hundred years, bouncing from town to town to town, robbing and stealing and surviving, until he found himself in London, being condemned to indentured servitude in the new colonies in the New World. The other option was to be hanged as a thief, and considering the number of times he’d been hanged and then subsequently burned as a witch for not dying, Murphy chose the journey across the ocean.

He would never forget the day that his life, after three hundred years, finally got interesting.

He remembered every detail of that day. He was on the deck of the ship, mopping and cursing his immortality. Twelve men died of some sickness, among them one of the only friends he’d made in three hundred years of life. They were nearing the colonies if the captain was to be believed. The sky was blue, cloudless, tranquil. The ocean seemed peaceful and only a slight breeze ruffled Murphy’s hair. It was perhaps one of the most peaceful moments he’d ever experienced.

“Pirates!”

The shriek from the crow’s nest led to Murphy dropping his mop and slipping on the wet deck. He landed firmly on his ass and glared up at the man scrambling down to the deck. He kept screaming, “Pirates! Pirates, we’re under attack!”

Murphy looked out over the water and saw the ship. It had black sails and a flag with a skull and crossbones on it. Murphy groaned. Great. Pirates. They were probably going to kill everyone on the ship and burn it, leaving him to swim the rest of the way to the damn colonies.

(He was not a good swimmer)

A sword was put in his hand and he was told to fight the pirates any way he could. Murphy didn’t bother to tell the captain that he was not a fighter, he was a thief. He was much better at not being seen and cutting the occasional throat than swinging a sword.

The pirates rammed his ship with theirs and boarded screaming, swinging swords and wielding pistols. Murphy ducked into a cabin, hoping to wait out the attack. He was not so lucky.

The blade of a knife pressed to his throat. Despite him knowing that it couldn’t harm him, Murphy couldn’t help the fear that clawed up from his stomach.

“Hiding like a coward?”

The thing that shocked Murphy most was that the voice that spoke was female.

“Cowards are usually the ones that survive,” he said. “I’m a fan of surviving.”

“Excellent,” the voice said. Murphy was whirled around and found himself staring down into deep brown eyes with golden flecks. He swallowed hard, something in his chest expanding. She was beautiful, with brown skin and brown hair and a mischievous smirk.

Of course, she also had a knife to his throat.

“You’re going to tell me where all the gold on this ship is,” she said. “Or I’ll have to cut your throat.”

“There’s not much in the way of gold on this ship,” Murphy said. “We’re all criminals, going to the colonies to live out the rest of our days as indentured servants.”

“Criminals?” The pirate looked him up and down. “What did you do?”

“I’m a thief,” Murphy said. “It was this or a noose.”

“Good choice,” she said with a smile. “Alright, thief. What about supplies?”

“Below decks.”

“Thank you.”

She plunged the knife into Murphy’s chest.

Murphy had been stabbed a fair number of times in the last three hundred years. Being the kind of monster farmers warn their children about usually leads to that. It usually hurt, but more like being poked with a sewing needle than actually having a blade pushed into your body. This time, though, there was a different hurt. One in his chest that had nothing to do with the knife and at the same time everything to do with the girl whose hand was still wrapped around the handle.

He felt betrayed, which was, of course, ridiculous considering she was a pirate that he had just met and she was just doing what pirates always did - stealing and killing.

He looked down at the knife sticking out of his chest and sighed.

“That’s a shame that you had to do that,” he said. He reached down and grabbed the knife, pulling it from his chest. The pirate backed away from him, her hand flying to her mouth. Murphy lowered the knife, looking down at himself. The wound was already closing, leaving not even a drop of blood on his shirt, just a large tear.

“You-”

“I liked this shirt, too,” Murphy muttered. He looked up at the pirate again. “Should I return the favor?”

Before he could say anything further, she lunged forward and grabbed the knife from his hand. Murphy went to defend himself, but before he could, she sank the knife into her own chest.

Murphy’s eyes widened and he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to scream or be glad that she was going to die. He settled for just staring at her.

She began to laugh and Murphy realized that she was standing there laughing with a knife sticking out of her chest.

“You’re…”

“Just like you,” she said, pulling the knife out. “How?”

“I made a shitty deal. You?”

“Me too.” She laughed again, dropping the knife. “Why don’t you come aboard my ship? I’m going to set this one aflame anyways, and I’m interested to hear about your shitty deal.”

“Yeah, I’ve done the whole fire thing,” Murphy said, following her out of the cabin. “Can’t say I’m a fan.”

She led him to her ship, barking orders at the other pirates. Murphy ignored the shouts behind him, climbing aboard the pirate ship. The girl brought him up by the helm, where they could look out over the ocean. Murphy crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the railing and watching the girl ordering around the pirate crew. She was the captain. _Of course._

Finally, the pirate ship had set sail, leaving Murphy’s old ship behind. The pirate captain returned to his side.

“It’s high time we introduced ourselves,” the girl said. “You can go first.”

“John Murphy,” Murphy said. “Most people call me Murphy.”

“John,” the girl said, rolling the word around in her mouth. She smiled. “I like it. I’m Emori.”

_Emori_.

“I like it,” Murphy said. “So how did you come to be immortal?”

Emori showed him her left hand, encased in a glove. It seemed to be bigger than her other hand. Murphy frowned at it and she removed the glove, revealing twisted fingers and too-large knuckles and scarring. He stared at it for a minute.

“I was born with it,” Emori said. “My village left me in the woods to die. I was found by a witch who brought me to her home. She and her two other sisters raised me. When I became older, I wanted them to fix my hand. I told them I would trade anything for it to be normal.”

Murphy stayed silent. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the twisted hand, but he wasn’t disgusted by it. It had a sort of beauty to it.

“They warned me that it would have a cost,” Emori continued. “But I didn’t care. I was so desperate to get rid of the thing that had gotten me cast out of my village.”

“So you made a deal.”

“I made a deal. They would fix my hand, I would give up my mortality. I didn’t understand what that meant, but I agreed to it anyways. When it was over, my hand still looked like this and I couldn’t die.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s what I said to them. They told me that there was nothing to fix. So I left.”

“I think it’s pretty badass,” Murphy said, gesturing at her hand. She glanced up at him, surprised. He grinned. “I wouldn’t cover it up with that glove.”

A small smile curled her lips.

“Liar. What about you? What’s your story?”

“Far less interesting than yours,” Murphy said. “I was born a peasant in England, my parents died of the plague, and I spent years running and stealing before I caught the plague too. I went to a witch and traded my mortality for the cure. She told me there was nothing for me in England and that I should go to France. Stupidly, I stayed in England for another three hundred years, got myself burned at the stake a few times for witchcraft, and ended up here.”

“France,” Emori said. “When was that?”

“Summer of 1353?”

She laughed.

“I was in Paris in 1353. If you’d listened to the witch, we might have met three hundred years ago.”

“Wouldn’t that have been something,” Murphy smiled. “How old are you?”

Emori thought about it.

“I think about three hundred and fifty years.”

“You’ve got thirty years on me,” Murphy laughed. Emori just smirked at that.

The ship continued on to the colonies. Murphy spent most of his time with Emori, trading stories of their many years of life. He didn’t have nearly as many as she did. She had been around most of the world, traveling from place to place, learning languages, and robbing just about every civilization she came across. She’d stolen the ship they were now standing on and gotten herself a pirate crew. They sailed the oceans, stealing from anyone and everyone unlucky enough to cross their path.

As days went by, Murphy found himself falling hard for everything about her - her smile, her eyes, her hands (both of them), the way she called him “John”, the freckles that seemed to cover every inch of her body, the way she laughed. He couldn’t believe that she was real. Some days he was sure he would wake up back on the ship bound for the colonies, ready for a few years of indentured servitude before he got burned as a witch again. But instead, he woke up on Emori’s ship, bound for the colonies but also for endless freedom.

Murphy lost track of time when he spent it with Emori, the two of them lying on their backs on the deck tracing constellations with their fingers or drinking and laughing over the ways people had tried to kill them.

“Is it possible for us to die?” Murphy asked one night. “I mean, it seems that there has to be some way that it’s possible.”

Emori quieted, taking a long drink from her flask of rum.

“We can die,” she said. “If we kill ourselves.”

Murphy blinked.

“But you stabbed yourself in the chest and you didn’t die.”

“That’s because I wasn’t trying to die,” Emori explained. “If I stabbed myself right now, fully wanting to die, I would. The witches that I grew up with explained it to me. We have to truly want to die. Otherwise, we just….don’t.”

“Huh.” Murphy took the flask from her. “Sounds like we made shitty deals.”

Emori laughed at that and Murphy internally smiled at his ability to pull such a pure sound from another human being.

The plan was to restock in Virginia and then sail up the coast, robbing every port they came across. Emori gave Murphy a gun, a pretty pistol, and he learned how to use it. He liked it better than the knife that he used to carry. Emori had a weapon as well - the knife she’d held to his throat the day they met, the length of her forearm and sharper than her wit.

They were a day’s journey from the port when everything went wrong.

Murphy was on the deck, staring through a spyglass at the calm, empty ocean when he saw the ship with the familiar flag whipping in the wind. He lowered the spyglass with a soft, “Fuck.”

“Emori! We’ve got a problem!”

She appeared at his side a moment later, snatching the spyglass from his hands. She swore, whipping away from the edge of the ship.

“British fuckers!” she shouted. “Let’s show them who’s in charge of these seas!”

The crew cheered and gathered their weapons. Murphy grabbed Emori’s arm.

“We can’t beat them,” he said quietly. “The British have the best navy in the world.”

“Pretty sure that’s Spain, but you’re right in that we can’t beat them.” Emori stared at the ship sailing towards them. “We’ll be captured. The crew will hang. The two of us might escape. Or we could jump ship now and swim the rest of the way to Virginia.”

“I’m not a good swimmer.”

Emori nodded, pulling her knife out of her belt.

“Fighting it is.”

Murphy grabbed his pistol and stared at the British ship, trying to decide how the two of them would escape. Maybe they would be hanged and pretend to be dead and wait to be buried before escaping (he’d done that one a few times). Or maybe they would be hanged and wouldn’t die and, as a consequence, be burned at the stake (he found that hiding in the ashes usually worked, as long as you did some satisfactory fake screaming and dying beforehand). Whatever happened, as long as he didn’t lose Emori in the process, he was alright with it.

The British boarded not long after. Emori stabbed the first four before she was overpowered by the next three and held down. Murphy shot two and was wrestled to the deck.

“This is the captain!” one of the men holding Murphy down shouted. “Throw the rest of the crew overboard!”

“No!” Murphy shouted. Emori barely had enough time to meet his eyes before she was flung over the side of the ship, her hands tightly bound behind her back. He whipped his head back, hearing a crunch as it met someone’s nose. The man’s grip on him loosened and he wrenched his right arm free, grabbing a sword off the deck. He managed to kill three more British soldiers before he was incapacitated a second time.

“We’ll take him to shore and hang him,” one of the soldiers said. “Show these idiot colonists what happens to thieves and pirates.”

Murphy was put in chains and dragged onto the British ship. They forced him to watch as Emori’s ship went up in flames. They put him on his knees in front of the captain of the ship, a man with a distasteful haircut and a sneer that could wilt plants.

“So, the famed Sangeda pirate has finally been found,” he said. “You’re a slippery man.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint,” Murphy said, spitting on the captain’s boots. “But you threw the true captain overboard and _she_ can swim. I’d sleep with one eye open tonight.”

The British captain was unimpressed.

“Take him to the brig and sail for Virginia. He’ll hang as soon as we get there.”

Murphy spent the night staring at the swinging lantern in the corner of the room, imagining smashing it and swimming away from the burning ship and the screaming men. He kept seeing Emori being thrown over the side of the ship like a piece of garbage. Like she was nothing.

_She was everything. I should have told her she was everything._

He remembered the feeling in his chest when she stabbed him. His heart had ached as if he had loved her and she had betrayed him. He remembered the sound of her laughter filling his ears, the feeling of her smile warming the cold parts of him, the sight of her eyes twinkling with mischief and joy, the smell of the sea at night when they would talk about everything and nothing at once. He missed her so much it made him curl over on himself in pain.

He’d never believed in soulmates before, but for one heartbreaking minute, he did.

 

* * *

 

Murphy went with the old hide-in-the-ashes method of escaping the people trying to kill him. He was rather proud of his performance that time; his screaming had tapered off at just the right time. He waited until dark to crawl out of the pile of ashes and steal some clothes from a clothesline. He found the British ship that had thrown Emori into the ocean and snuck aboard, slitting the throat of the captain, taking his pistol, and setting off north. Maybe he’d find work in another town far enough away that nobody would know his face.

He ended up on a farm as an indentured servant after being discovered stealing bread from the baker. He cursed his immortality every day, the pistol at the bottom of his bag the last reminder of Emori he had left. Some days he woke up with tears on his cheeks after nightmares where he watched her drown beside her burning ship. In his dreams, he’d try to drown with her, but never could and was forced to watch as she sank down, down, lost to him forever. He’d wake up with an ache in his chest, whispering to himself, “She’s immortal. She can’t die unless she truly wants to. She’s immortal. She’s alive somewhere.”

After his seven years were up, he went back to the town they burned him in and searched for her. He heard no stories about a girl with a mangled hand or a band of pirates searching for a missing crew member. He eventually headed north again, resigning himself to never finding her again. Maybe he’d meet other immortals. There was no way he and Emori were the only ones. There had to be others.

He bounced from town to town for a few decades, selling his labor and seeking a way to fill the sudden gaping hole in his chest. A few more decades he spent in the woods somewhere in rural New York, building a house for himself. He kept adding to it as years went by - a set of stairs here, another room there, a spare bedroom here, an extension to the kitchen, a stolen chandelier over the dining room table, a big half-empty bed in the bedroom.

It was always missing something.

He was in New York City stealing when the revolution broke out. He wasn’t a fan of the British (he still had nightmares about Emori’s body slipping beneath the waves), but he wasn’t about to fight some damn revolution to free the colonies. So he retreated to his house in the woods and lost track of the years. He acquired a few guns from British soldiers who were stupid enough to wander close to his house. A few colonists would knock on his door during the years of the war and ask him for shelter or supplies or his help in fighting. Usually, the persistent ones would scamper after Murphy pulled a gun on them. If not, he’d grow vegetables on their graves.

He discovered whiskey somewhere around 1783 and spent the next seventeen years drunk off his ass, growing his own food and keeping to himself and gaining a reputation for being unfriendly and violent when aggravated.

She reappeared in 1800 with the same mischievous smile and gold flecks in her eyes.

Murphy was hammering down a loose board in the stairs, gulping whiskey between swings of the hammer when someone knocked on his door. He let out a groan, dropping his hammer. He set the bottle of whiskey down on the table and stumbled to the door. It was probably some bull about the stupid election again. He picked up the pistol Emori had given him back in 1664, his fingers curling easily around the handle. He opened the door and aimed the gun right at the guest’s head.

“How many times do I have to fucking tell you, I don’t give a shit who Aaron fucking Burr is better than or how many times Thomas motherfucking Jefferson saved orphans or kittens or whatever bullshit you’re spouting this time-”

“Hello to you too, John.”

Murphy blinked, realizing that his gun was pressed to Emori’s forehead. His eyes widened and the gun fell from his hand. Emori’s smile stretched and he wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to his chest.

“It’s been a hundred fifty years,” he whispered into her hair. “Where the hell have you been?”

She hugged him back, running her left hand up and down his spine gently.

“Here and there. Stealing from everyone I could, mostly.”

Murphy dragged her into the house and they collapsed onto the sofa (he was pretty sure he’d stolen that particular piece of furniture from some rich asshole named Alexander Hamilton, but it might have been the one he’d stolen from John Adams) and she started to explain where she’d been.

“By the time I made it to shore after they threw me off the ship, you were long gone,” she said, nestling herself into his arms. She ran her fingers up and down his arm. “I heard a story about a man who had been hanged but hadn’t died and knew it must have been you. They said they burned you at the stake, but that night you came for the British who hanged you. They said you slit the captain’s throat and set the ship aflame.”

“Fuckers deserved it,” Murphy murmured, tightening his arms around her. She laughed and the hole in Murphy’s chest began to fill.

“No arguments there, John. I asked if any of them knew where you’d gone, but they were convinced I was some sort of spirit as well. I don’t blame them; I crawled out of the ocean and started walking around asking about a man they all thought was a demon. I fled before they had the chance to burn me at the stake and headed south. I spent about a decade in each colony - well, I suppose they’re states now - until I was sure you weren’t there. I gradually made my way north, but sometimes I’d get caught somewhere longer than I meant to. Then the revolution happened and I was caught up in that.”

“What do you mean, caught up in that?”

“I was dressing as a man at the time because it made traveling a lot easier. I got drafted into a local militia. Drained a lot of my time. Once the war was over, I kept moving north. It took me a while, but I heard rumors of an unfriendly man with a century-old pistol who lived by himself in the woods and shot anyone who pissed him off. I figured it was worth checking out.”

Murphy snorted.

“Those assholes in the village talk too much.”

Emori laughed, her fingers resting on the inside of his elbow.

“I found you, didn’t I?”

“You did. You came back.”

“I did. So, I’ve told you about my adventures. What about you?”

Murphy sighed.

“I guess I kind of suck at this whole ‘being immortal’ thing because I’ve been living here for a good hundred years. Before that, I was wandering from town to town and working for whoever would take me.”

Emori glanced around the house.

“Did you build this?”

“I did. As you can tell, I didn’t have much to do for a hundred years.”

Emori climbed out of his arms, ignoring his whine of protest. She began to wander the house, running her fingers over the beat up chairs around the dining table and taking in the mismatched furniture and decorations with wide eyes.

“I’m not gonna lie, I stole a good half of the shit that’s in this house,” Murphy said, following her as she explored. She smirked.

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

She climbed the stairs, nudging the abandoned hammer aside with her foot. She peered into the spare room and then into the bedroom. Murphy froze in the doorway as she took in the bed, one side neatly made while the other was messy.

“Looks awfully lonely,” she said softly. Murphy swallowed, unable to look her in the eye.

“Yeah, well, there’s not many people who want to be with a thief.”

“Good thing I’m a thief too, then,” Emori said. Murphy looked up, meeting her gaze. She crooked one finger at him and he crashed into her, his arms around her waist and his mouth on hers desperately. The hole in his chest filled the rest of the way as Emori slid her hands into his hair and pressed kisses to his jaw. Each one felt like a promise. _I won’t leave again. I won’t leave again. I won’t leave again. This time I’ll stay_.

This time she stayed.

Murphy already had a reputation for being an unfriendly bastard. Most people avoided his house altogether, and those who got close enough to ask questions either assumed he was the latest son in a family of unfriendly bastards or became fertilizer for his garden. So he was certain that Emori’s presence wouldn’t raise too many questions. The two of them lived peacefully for a few years, tending to the garden and occasionally venturing out to the nearest major road to steal from anyone unfortunate to wander down it. Murphy was usually the dead guy in the road, a role he objected to as once he’d simply been run over by an uncaring politician. It pulled quite a bit of money in, though, and the two of them built what felt like safety.

Emori gave birth to a son in 1815 and Murphy’s world began to fall apart.

The boy would grow up with parents that couldn’t grow old. The boy would grow up and someday look older than his parents. The boy would grow up never understanding why they stayed away from the town. The boy would grow up in a cruel world filled with even crueler people.

Emori cried the night Alex Murphy was born, her hands hovering over the baby’s small deformed foot. Murphy held her as she cried, their son sleeping peacefully a few feet away.

“We’ll figure something out,” he murmured to her. “We’ll figure something out.”

“He’s going to grow old,” she sobbed. “He’s going to grow old and we’re not. He’ll never understand what - he’ll never get to be normal.”

“It’s okay,” Murphy said, rocking her gently. “It’s okay.”

He had no idea how it was going to be okay, but he did his best to convince both of them.

Their son had a limp once he was old enough to walk, his twisted foot dragging awkwardly when he toddled around the house. Emori and Murphy homeschooled him, not wanting to risk going to the village and being discovered as immortals. Alex Murphy grew up an intelligent young boy, with eyes like his mother and a smirk like his father.

When he was thirteen, a group of townspeople came to their house with torches and pitchforks. Murphy met them on the pathway with one of his guns, Emori two steps behind him with the gun she’d used to fight in the Revolution.

“What do you want?” Murphy demanded.

“You’re all witches!” one of the townspeople shouted. “All three of you!”

“Where’s the boy?”

Emori aimed her musket at the townsperson that had asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Touch my son and I’ll pump you full of lead,” she hissed.

“Mom? Dad?”

“Alex, get back in the house,” Murphy said calmly. He clicked a bullet into place, pointing his gun at the closest townsperson. “We’ve got this under control.”

“They’re demons!” one of the townspeople screamed. “Ageless demons!”

“Alex,” Emori snapped. “In the house, now.”

The front door slammed and Murphy exhaled slowly, shifting his gaze between the townspeople.

“Does anybody here really want to die?” he asked. “My wife and I are human, thank you very much, but if you threaten us, we will defend ourselves. Threaten our son and we’ll kill every single one of you. Anyone confused?”

Someone threw a torch at the house.

Emori let out a scream like she’d been set on fire and dropped her gun, running into the house. Murphy started to shoot until he was out of bullets, at which point he picked up Emori’s abandoned gun and fired a few more times. The townspeople left standing fled and Murphy turned to his burning house, sprinting inside.

“Emori! Alex!”

He found them in the dining room, Emori dragging Alex away from the flames. He helped her to pull Alex from the house. He pressed his ear to their son’s chest and breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard a heartbeat.

“He’s alive,” he said. He laughed a little, clutching his son. “He’s alive.”

“He’s not safe here anymore,” Emori said sadly, brushing Alex’s hair off his face. “We can’t stay here.”

Murphy nodded.

They put out the fire and took what they could from the house. They began to go west, figuring they would be safer on the frontier, where fewer people were around to question why John Murphy and his wife didn’t get any older and people disappeared more easily.

“John,” Emori said one night. They were sitting in the back of a wagon, hitching a ride as far west as they could go. “We can’t stay with Alex much longer.”

“You’re right,” Murphy said, glancing over at the sleeping boy. Soon enough he would look older than his parents. “We can’t.”

“What are we supposed to do?” Emori asked. “How are we supposed to leave him?”

“I don’t know,” Murphy said. She put her head on his shoulder and they rode in silence a while longer. Finally, Emori grabbed his hand.

“We’ll jump off the wagon,” she said. “On the count of three. The man that is giving us a ride will take care of Alex.”

“How do you know?”

“He mentioned his wife and children. He’ll assume we fell off and died and take in Alex as his own. He’ll be safe.”

Murphy nodded slowly. Emori kissed Alex’s forehead one last time before turning away and jumping off of the wagon. Murphy took a moment to drink in his last sight of his son before leaping off the wagon. He hit his head on a stone and the world went dark.

The next morning, he woke up alone.

 

* * *

 

Murphy spent fourteen years wandering from town to town, robbing and killing and searching for Emori. Where would she have gone? After almost thirty years of staying, why would she suddenly disappear?

He gained a reputation in the West for being cold and hard and merciless. And why wouldn’t he be? He lost his son and the woman he loved in the same heartbreaking night.

He found himself in Kansas fifteen years after he and Emori had been separated again, wandering down a road that wound around farms. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked past cows and corn and small barns that dotted the fields. He spotted a farmhouse up ahead and his stomach growled. Maybe they’d give him food. He was far enough away from any town that he’d robbed for them to know his face, and besides, he had enough money from his latest robbery to pay them.

He knocked on the door of the farmhouse, glancing around the yard. A small herb garden was fenced in and he could hear the soft clucking of chickens. His heart ached for New York, for their house with the vegetable garden and the couch he’d stolen from Hamilton and the baby blanket Emori had sewn together with scraps of clothing and the quiet kitchen where morning light poured in like warm honey. His heart ached for home.

A kind-looking woman opened the door after a few minutes, smiling brightly at him.

“Hello,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m just looking for something to eat,” Murphy said. The woman’s eyes dropped to the gun holsters slung around his hips but her kind smile didn’t falter.

“Of course, sweetheart. Come on in.”

Sometimes Murphy forgot that he looked like a twenty-year-old man and not a day older. This woman thought she was older than him. She looked to be in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. He followed her into the farmhouse, towards the kitchen.

“I’ve just finished making supper if you want to have some-”

“Dad?”

Murphy froze. He turned to see a man standing at the base of a set of stairs, staring at him with his jaw on the floor.

“Dad, is that you?”

Murphy took in his son. He’d grown up well, with broad, tan shoulders and long legs. He had his mother’s freckles and Murphy’s jawline. Murphy’s chest ached when he looked into Alex’s eyes and saw the same gold flecks his mother had.

“Alex,” the woman said. “You told me your parents died traveling out west.”

“I thought-”

“I can explain,” Murphy said. He glanced at the woman. “I would like to explain in private if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. Mary, I think Lydia is hungry.”

Mary gave Murphy a suspicious glance and headed up the stairs. Murphy sat down heavily at the kitchen table.

“Do you have any alcohol?” he asked tiredly. Alex set a bottle of rum down in front of him and a shard twisted in Murphy’s chest as the taste on his tongue reminded him of wind-whipped hair and a salty breeze and the gentle rocking of the ship beneath his feet.

“You look the same,” Alex said, sitting across from Murphy. “You look the same as you did the night we left New York.”

Murphy sighed, taking a long drink of rum.

“Alex, do you know who your mother and I named you after?”

“Your father, Alexander Murphy. He fought in the Revolution and died before I was born. That’s where Mom got that gun.”

Murphy shook his head.

“Alex Murphy died a poor farmer in England in 1345. Your mother fought in the Revolution, not your grandfather. It wasn’t your great-great-grandfather that built the house in New York, it was me.”

Alex stared at him.

“Your mother and I met in 1664, on a ship bound for the colonies. She was a pirate, and a rather good one, too. I was a criminal on my way to indentured servitude.” Murphy smiled a little at the memory. “She stabbed me and realized that I couldn’t die. She showed me that she couldn’t either and I joined her crew. That’s how we met.”

“But you-”

“We’re immortal,” Murphy explained. “I’ve been alive for a little over five hundred years. Your mother is nearing her five hundred-thirtieth birthday, I think. We each made a deal with a witch that involved trading away our mortality. I wanted to be cured of the plague. Your mother wanted the witches that raised her to fix her hand.”

Alex’s eyes dropped to his foot.

“That night, when the townspeople came to the house, we knew we couldn’t stay in New York. People were beginning to realize that we didn’t age. You weren’t safe anymore. And we couldn’t stay with you. So we jumped off the wagon one night and resolved ourselves to never seeing you again.”

“Where is she?”

Murphy shut his eyes, taking another long drink from his rum.

“I have no idea,” he said quietly. “We were separated the night we left you. I don’t know where she went.”

“Where have you been the last fifteen years?” Alex asked, his voice acquiring an edge to it. “How could you just _leave_ like that? How could you leave _Mom_?”

“I didn’t leave Emori,” Murphy snapped, then immediately softened. “I would never leave her on purpose. Ever since I met her I’ve been trying to hold onto her as tight as I can.”

Alex was silent for another minute.

“Was that your wife?” Murphy finally asked. “Mary?”

“Yes. We have three children. Lydia is upstairs. James and Aaron are with the chickens. Did you…. Have you had children before me?”

“No,” Murphy said. “And I hope we never have any others. This has been…. too painful.”

He sat there for another moment, then stood and picked up the bag of money he carried with him.

“Take this,” he said, tossing it on the table. “It’s probably more than you make in a year. It should help you to take care of your family.”

Alex shot to his feet as Murphy headed for the door, limping after his father.

“Where are you going?” he demanded. “Are you really disappearing again?”

Murphy grabbed a basket of vegetables off a table and kept walking.

“I’m not disappearing,” he said. “I’m going to find your mother.”

 

* * *

 

Murphy stole a horse somewhere in Arizona, or maybe New Mexico. Days blended into weeks into months into years as he moved from town to town through the growing West. He would return to the small farmhouse in Kansas every few months, dropping off money without telling Alex where he got it. He hated going back without Emori and Alex seemed to get angrier every time he did.

“She’ll come back,” Murphy said to Alex, one terrible night when they were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, a fresh argument still hanging in the air between them. “She’ll come back. I’ll find her.”

“When people leave, they don’t come back,” Alex spat.

“She did.” Murphy traced the grain of the wooden table. “After a hundred fifty years, she found me again.”

“Get the fuck out of my house,” Alex said, shooting to his feet. “I swear to God, if you come back again I’ll put all the bullets in my gun in your chest.”

Murphy didn’t bother remind his son that it wouldn’t kill him and left, saddling up his stolen horse and riding as far away from Kansas as fast as he could. He went to California, where the gold rush had created an economy to rival those in the east. He rode through the deserts of the southwest, where Spanish was more common than English. He traveled through the north, where almost no American settlers were yet. Every month that passed without finding Emori drove Murphy more and more towards the edge. Where had she gone? What if she was dead?

It felt like he was back in his old dreams, watching her sink as the waves kept him at the surface and his immortality refused to let him die with her.

After over fifteen years of combing through the sparsely populated west, Murphy turned his attention back east. He weighed the risks of going back to New York. It had been more than thirty years. The people that would have known him would either be too dead, too old, or too young to know his face.

He missed home.

He rode for New York in January of 1861, after thirty-three years without Emori. Alex was nearing his forty-sixth birthday, though Murphy hadn’t seen him since he was thirty-eight. Not that time felt like anything to Murphy anymore. Five hundred years of life had drained him of any care for time.

Thirty-three years without Emori had drained him of any care for much of anything.

He was in Virginia when the war broke out.

Murphy was far from a Confederate (he thought they were all a bunch of pricks), but he was unfortunate to be on the wrong side of the dividing line between the North and the South and found himself in a grey uniform, fighting just to fight. He spent weeks in the middle of the fighting, sometimes finding himself the only surviving soldier in grey, but there was no escape for a Confederate. Every time he tried to walk away, he would be absorbed by another group of soldiers and on and on the war would go.

It was a blessing to be captured by Union soldiers, if only because he’d stopped fighting.

He was taken to a Union camp and spit on by every blue-clad soldier there. He didn’t care. This was nothing but a blip. Eventually, the war would be over and he’d go home, to New York, and live the rest of his unending life alone.

He remembered the pistol hidden in his uniform. A two-hundred-year-old pistol. One bullet left.

He was shoved into a tent and told to wait for Edward to come to decide what to do with him. Murphy didn’t know or care who Edward was. He didn’t really want to know, come to think of it. He’d heard the rumors about the Union prison camps. He couldn’t die but he could sure as hell feel pain.

The pistol was heavy in his hands. It was different from the newer guns that Murphy carried, more elegant. Murphy ran his hand over the carving in the handle, remembering Emori’s windswept smile when she gave it to him. She’d said that she had never liked guns, preferring her knife. Murphy remembered the time she’d pulled that knife on one of their idiot neighbors in New York. She’d had the same smile, the same spark in her eyes as that day on the ship.

The barrel was cold when he pressed it to the underside of his chin, tears snaking down his cheeks as the gun rattled from his shaking hands. He willed himself to pull the trigger. He didn’t want to go on. He was so tired of fighting. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go back to the quiet house in New York, with his little son running around in the garden. He wanted to go back to evenings spent on Emori’s ship, the breeze blowing her hair in shifting patterns on the deck. He wanted to go to sleep. He wanted to die he wanted to die he wanted to die-

He didn’t want to die alone.

The gun fell from his hands and he sobbed, just once. He hated that he was still a coward that feared death after all his years of life. He stared at the gun lying in the dirt, wondering if he would be able to do it if he picked it up again.

“Fucking Confederates, didn’t I tell you to just shoot-”

Murphy looked up from the gun on the ground to see Emori standing at the flap of the tent, her mouth open and her eyes wide. Her hair was twisted up, hidden under her cap, and her blue uniform indicated a position of power in the army. Her eyes dropped to the pistol Murphy had just pressed to his head.

Murphy thought that when he saw Emori again, he would be angry. He’d imagined he would demand to know where she’d been. He’d always planned out what he would say, what she would say, how they would argue until one forgave the other.

In his plans, he’d never imagined how much it would hurt to see the tears on her face.

“John…?”

He shot to his feet and had her wrapped in his arms in less than a second, shutting his eyes. She sobbed once, her shaking hands pressed to his back.

“I’m sorry,” she kept repeating, tears leaking into Murphy’s uniform.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.”

He kept her in a tight embrace as long as he could, rocking the two of them back and forth a little. He knew that there was still a civil war raging, but as far as he was concerned, there was nothing else outside of that tent and the two immortals inside of it.

“What happened?” he asked, refusing to remove his arms from her.

“After we jumped, I just started walking. I didn’t realize you weren’t with me. I wasn’t thinking clearly. By the time I realized you were gone, I was too far away to remember how to get back to you. I wandered by myself for a long time before a wagon train picked me up. I traveled the West for a long time. I heard stories of you in the towns. They said you were a merciless robber who never died. They seemed to think you were some sort of spirit or demon.”

“Always a demon,” Murphy muttered. “Get some imagination, people.” Emori laughed and Murphy pulled her even closer to him.

“I went back north after a while and enlisted in the army. I made it to the rank of captain.”

“I was drafted,” Murphy said. “I was stupid enough to be in Virginia when the fighting started, on the wrong side of the damn war. I’ve been trying to escape for years now.”

“Soon it will be over,” Emori said, running her hand up and down his spine. “Soon it will be over.”

“I found Alex,” Murphy whispered into her hair. She stiffened in his arms and he pulled back a little. New tears glistened in her eyes.

“What?”

“I was in Kansas eighteen years ago and I just...found him. He has three children. Their names are James, Aaron, and Lydia. I think Lydia’s eighteen.”

“We have grandchildren,” Emori said, pressing one hand to her mouth. She stared at Murphy and more tears poured down her face, running over her fingers. “They’ll be older than us someday.”

“Shh.”

“This is why we left him. This is why we left.”

“He’s beautiful,” Murphy said softly. Emori sobbed again. “He looks like you.”

“John, I-”

“Let the mortals fight their war,” Murphy said. “Let’s go.”

“......Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

They left in the dark of the night, ditching their uniforms in one of the trenches and stealing new clothes from an unattended clothesline. Murphy kept Emori’s hand in his, not willing to lose her again. Two stolen horses later, they were on their way to Kansas.

Murphy hadn’t been back to Alex’s farm in years. The fields were full of vegetables and he could see James and Aaron picking them in the distance as well as a few other farmhands. While Murphy tried to avoid his grandsons (his agelessness was a burden he didn’t want to force them to carry), he was proud of how strong they’d become.

“You fucking coward!”

Three bullets ripped through Murphy’s chest and he dropped to one knee, gasping. Emori screamed something that didn’t register. Murphy glanced down and saw the wounds already closing. He looked up and saw Alex reloading his gun, aiming it at his father again.

“I do recall promising to pump you full of lead if you dared show your fucking face here again!” Alex shouted. Two more bullets tore through Murphy and he wheezed out a laugh.

“Good to see you too, Alex.”

“Alexander Murphy!” Emori snapped. Alex swiveled towards her and his mouth dropped open, the gun falling to the ground.

“Mom?”

“Alex, I did say she’d come back,” Murphy said, getting up and brushing off his shirt. He scowled at the bullet holes ripped through it. “I just stole this, too.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Alex said.

They all went into the kitchen and Alex poured Emori a cup of tea, shoved a bottle of whiskey into Murphy’s hands without looking his father in the eye, and sat down heavily. Murphy surveyed his son over the whiskey bottle, thinking that he might’ve looked like that if he wasn’t immortal.

“You’ve grown so much,” Emori said. “How long have you lived out here?”

“How long have you been gone?”

Murphy flinched at the angry edge in Alex’s voice, remembering their last fight. Emori’s eyes hardened immediately and she set down the cup of tea.

“You have no right to speak to me like that,” she snapped. “What I did, I did for you. Unless you’ve forgotten why we had to leave New York.”

That shut Alex up about _that_ subject. Emori picked up the tea again and sipped it, listening to Alex telling her about his family and the life he had. She refused to meet his children, saying that she didn’t want any more heartache than she already had.

They stayed until the sun began to set. Alex hugged both of his parents before they left. Emori stroked her son’s hair and promised to return again someday.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be there,” she said softly. Murphy stared at the setting sun and tried to remember the last time Alex had looked at him with the love he looked at Emori with.

“It’s okay,” Alex said. “I forgive you.”

Murphy shut his eyes.

“Both of you.”

Murphy was startled by Alex’s hands on his shoulders. He opened his eyes and Alex smiled ruefully.

“I was angry at you,” he said. “That wasn’t fair. You did… you found Mom. You did what you had to all those years ago.”

Murphy swallowed and Alex pulled him into a hug. He patted his son awkwardly on the back, trying to decide how he felt. He finally settled on happy.

Emori and Murphy had to leave their son again. Emori cried almost as hard as she had the night Alex was born and Murphy held her twice as tightly. They rode for New York, past the war and right to the house that Murphy had built those many years before.

It looked almost the same as it had the night they left. Ivy was creeping up the walls and the garden was overgrown, but the house was still the same one they’d raised their son in. Inside was a slightly different story. The fire all those years before had ruined part of the house and rain had exacerbated the damage, collapsing one of the walls. Murphy and Emori spent a few weeks rebuilding that part. Dust coated every surface, so they cleaned the entire house thoroughly. Next they went into the garden and fixed their vegetables. Laughter filled the house again.

Murphy remembered what it was to be happy.

Every morning he woke up with Emori in his arms, he would thank whatever deity brought her back to him time and time again. Sometimes he’d wake up without her and fear would whisper that it was all a dream, but then he would wander through the house and find her sitting in the garden or on the couch or in the kitchen, staring out at the world and humming to herself as she braided her hair.

Some things Murphy wished would never change.

 

* * *

 

Alexander Murphy died in the spring of 1870, at the ripe age of fifty-five. Murphy broke his knuckles on the wall and Emori didn’t eat for three days after the news. The two of them wouldn’t leave the house for almost seven years. The industrial explosion in New York forced them out of the house to start earning money. It was beginning to become difficult to exist without anyone noticing. Murphy tried to remember if he’d ever officially purchased the land they lived on. Emori found out that it was owned by the government, officially, and Murphy used some of the money that the two of them had stolen over time to buy it. The two of them went back to their quiet life, growing vegetables and pretending that they were fine without Alex. Emori found the old baby blanket she’d made him one night while they were cleaning and clutched it to her chest, sobbing. That’s where Murphy found her an hour later, the fabric stained from her tears. He sank down next to her and let her crawl into his lap and together they battled the emptiness their son’s death had left.

Some things Murphy wished could change.


End file.
